This time, when I approached, the crowd did part. A wide berth that formed in slow-motion-movie time.

“Oh my God,” said Allison Calhoun, another freshman who’d snubbed me on my first day but started kissing my ass when she saw that Olivia and Hilary had taken me on. She giggled maliciously into her hand.

When I fought my way to the lounge’s state line, I discovered what had drawn the crowd. My running shorts—the ones I’d worn yesterday for practice—were tacked to the bulletin board on the far wall beneath a handwritten sign that read, SNIFF A SKANK (AT YOUR OWN RISK . . . SHE STANKS!). The words were written in bright bubble letters, their color and shape as happy as a message for a bake sale to raise money for kids with cancer. Only a girl could have written them. A realization hardened in me as I remembered Hilary and Olivia, acting so oddly nice in the locker room the day before.

I pushed back out of the crowd the same way I came in. There was a bathroom right across the way, and I locked myself into a stall, remembering how I’d gotten my period yesterday, had been so relieved when it arrived because it meant the morning-after pill had worked. The run had jogged it all loose. When I’d taken off the shorts, they’d been stained a brownish red. I couldn’t even imagine how dirty and gross they looked, how the terrible combination of sweat and period blood must smell. I’d been so distracted by Hilary’s and Olivia’s sudden kindness I hadn’t even noticed the shorts were missing when I packed my bag.

The door opened and I heard the tail end of a spirited debate: “Deserves it.”

“C’mon, it’s pretty mean, don’t you think?”

Silently, I climbed on top of the toilet, tucking my legs underneath me.

“Dean takes it too far,” another said. “It’s all fun and games until she tries to kill herself like Ben.”

“Ben can’t help being gay,” the first girl said. “She can help being a whore.”

Her friend laughed, and I swallowed a thick sob. I heard the water run and the sound of paper towels crunching in their hands. Then the door yawning shut behind them.

I had never cut school in my entire life. I can’t even call in sick to work now, all that good Catholic girl obedience milled into my bones, but the day had broken me, bulldozed any fear about what might happen if I didn’t follow the rules. All that mattered was honoring the humiliation, so crushing, it left me short of breath. I waited right where I was, working a section of hair between my fingers over and over (“self-soothing behavior” according to The Women’s Magazine’s body language expert), until the first-period bell stopped ringing. I gave it another five minutes to ensure I wouldn’t run into any stragglers in the hallways. Then I climbed off the toilet seat, silent as Spider-Man, pushed open the door to the bathroom, and walked briskly down the hallway and out the back entrance. I’d take the train to Thirtieth Street Station. Wander around the city for the day. I was halfway out the parking lot when I heard someone calling my name behind me. It was Arthur.

“I think we have some leftover lasagna in here.” Arthur peered into the refrigerator, buzzing noisily.

I glanced at the display on the stove: 10:15. “I’m fine.”

Arthur bumped the door shut with his hip, a casserole dish in his hands, the top crusted yellow with cheese. He cut a generous slice and slid the plate into the microwave.

“Oh.” He licked tomato sauce off his finger and dropped to his heels, rummaging around in his backpack. “Here.” He flung my shorts at me.

They were light as paper, but when they landed in my lap I emitted a baritone “oof” as though someone had kicked me in the stomach.

“How did you get these?” I smoothed them out on my lap like a dinner napkin.

“They’re not the fucking Mona Lisa,” he said.

“What does that mean?’

Arthur zipped his backpack shut and rolled his eyes at me. “Haven’t you ever been to the Louvre?”

“What’s the Louvre?”

Arthur laughed. “Oh, dear.”

The microwave beeped, and Arthur got up to test his dish. With his back to me, I took a quick whiff of my shorts. I had to know what everyone else had smelled.

It was bad. The odor was sharp, primeval, inhabited your lungs like a disease. I stuffed the damp mesh ball into my backpack and propped my head on one hand, the tears snaking a silent, diagonal path across my nose.

Arthur sat down across from me, letting me cry while he shoveled piles of steaming red-sauced meat into his mouth. Between bites he said, “When I’m done with this I’m going to show you something that’s going to make you feel a lot better.”

Arthur polished off the loaf of lasagna in minutes. He took his plate to the sink and dropped it in there, not even bothering to rinse it. With a little wave of his hand, he started for the door in the corner of the kitchen. I’d assumed it was a door to a pantry or closet, but Arthur opened it to reveal a cold black rectangle. I’d later discover that Arthur’s old house had no shortage of doors—leading to back stairwells; closets; rooms mountained with books and papers, lumpy, floral-print couches sagging in the corners. At one point, Arthur’s mother’s side of the family had money, but it was so tied up in trusts, complicated legal decisions made of their past, that no one would ever spend it. Mr. Finnerman had walked out on Arthur and his mom eight years earlier, which had destroyed Mrs. Finnerman but which she tries to pretend didn’t. “Just one less mouth to feed!” she’s fond of saying whenever she’s feeling pitied. Mrs. Finnerman had gotten a job at Bradley not long after Arthur was born, knowing Mr. Finnerman was never going to wake up before noon, would never pull his own weight, that her position would ensure her son a spot, and a break, financially. Not everyone is flush on the Main Line, but the priorities are certainly different than the kind I’d grown up with. Education, travel, culture—this is what any pennies pinched should be used for, never flashy cars, loud logos, or personal maintenance.

Still, on the Main Line, coming from a family that used to have money was infinitely more acceptable than coming from a family with money that was new as could be. It was part of the reason Arthur despised Dean. Arthur had property that would yield a much higher return than the latest Mercedes S-Class: He had knowledge. He knew mysterious things like to pass the salt and pepper together and that steak should always be cooked medium rare. He knew Times Square was the most despicable place on earth and that Paris was divided into twenty arrondissements. Soon enough, with his connections and his grades, he would be accepted into Columbia, where his mother’s side had legacy.

His hand on the doorknob, he turned to me. “You coming?”

Closer, I made out a few dingy steps before the dark swallowed them whole. I’d always hated the dark. I still went to bed with the hallway light on.

Arthur patted along the wall until he found the light switch, and one lone bulb shuddered on. A cloud of dust puffed up beneath his foot with his first step. He’d kicked off his shoes when we first walked into his house, and his feet were swollen, the skin ripe and shiny like a baby’s.

“This is not what my basement looks like,” I said, trailing not far behind. The floor was gray concrete, the walls ripped open, orange fluffy innards exposed. An army of clutter anchored one side of the basement—discarded furniture, boxes of scratched records, dusty paperbacks, old New Yorkers slumping with mildew.

“Let me guess.” Arthur grinned at me over his shoulder. Beneath the jaundiced bulb, his acne purpled. “It has carpeting.”

“Yeah, so?” Arthur continued toward the mess against the far wall and didn’t answer. I made my voice carry across the room. “What’s wrong with carpeting?”